Oskar Czendze

Oskar Czendze received a $3,500 BIAAS grant for his project, “From Loss to Invention: Galician Jews Between New York and East Central Europe, 1890-1938.” His project investigates the daily life experiences of Jewish immigrants from Austrian Galicia in New York’s Lower East Side. With the help of the Botstiber Research Grant, Czendze will collect autobiographical, Jewish communal and institutional records in archives in Austria, Poland, and Ukraine which will highlight the transnational nature of the development of a specific Galician sense of belonging among these Jewish immigrants. This study will emphasize the fluidity of cultural labels, such as the Galitsyaner, and challenge the national paradigm in the scholarship on East European Jewry.“

Oskar Czendze is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his MA in History from the University of Augsburg, Germany. His research interests include the social and cultural history of Jews in East Central Europe, and questions of migration, memory and belonging in the modern era.